Stool Samples

Peter King must have a ton of celebrity readers, because he sure as hell isn’t talking to us normal people.

In last week’s MMQB, the Stool Samples MVP went a little heavy on one of his favorite tactics – pretending he’s talking directly to the person he’s writing about.  We counted a whopping seven instances in his article, or roughly one for every time SI.com makes you click “next page” to a read one freaking article on their site:

The money must be pretty good, Jim Zorn, to get hired without knowing who your boss will be.

Go easy on the cheeseburgers in Phoenix, LenDale (White) (yes, Peter is actually warning someone how to eat.)

Good decision, Mike (Holmgren)

Memo to Ben (Roethlisberger)..

You'll get paid, Ryan Grant. Just not on the heels of one half of a very good year.

Kimmie Meissner, shake it off.

Hang in there, John Edwards.

Either he was certain that he had several coaches, two star running backs, a Super Bowl winning QB, a world class figure skater and a presidential candidate all perusing the site or King took this one overboard this week.

Don’t worry you’re not alone, Pete.  We do it sometimes too.  

Crap that actually came from somebody's mouth
"He's Tom Brady.  The all encompassing celebrity.  Mr. Paparazzi.  Everything is about Brady, feeding into 19-0." - Jay Mariotti, on the Super Bowl

"This is Tom Brady's team.  This is the story.  History can't be made without Tom Brady.  He is the story this week, bottom line.  He missed two days of practice last week.  This is a guy who never misses a workout.  This is a guy who's walking gingerly.  This is the whole story." - Bill Plaschke

This is a response from the average sports fan: Call us crazy, but we’re intrigued by the Super Bowl to see who will be crowned champion.  

This is a response from the fan who took the quote literally: Call us crazy, but history could be made without Tom Brady, assuming Brady leaves the game injured and Matt Cassel comes in to throw 3 touchdown passes and lead the Patriots to a victory.  

This is a response from someone who just doesn’t like Bill Plaschke: We really don’t think you like sports, Bill.
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"I think we get our undies in a bunch way too easy in the media.  We are critical, we criticize our subjects... And when Jim Calhoun criticized the media, now we're all upset over it.  I don't understand it.  We need to get thicker skin.  It's okay for our subjects to criticize us too." – Jay Bilas

We’re going on record as saying this is the best example you’ll ever see of a Jay Bilas quote we agree with.  Bonus points for the use of “undies”, Jay.  
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"I believe, in my heart, that (Week 17) game that was supposed to be nothing to the Giants was the most important game of the season." - Sean Salisbury

Something tells us that Sean didn’t think that immediately after he watched the Week 17 game between the Giants and Patriots.  
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"Chris Paul is definitely a top 5 candidate but for me, right now, the MVP of the league is LeBron James.  Right now, it's got to be LeBron.  I love you, Chris Paul, what you're doing out there, but I don't think you're quite ready to be MVP.  Top five definitely.  Kobe, LeBron out there, Dwight Howard and KG with Chris Paul." - Tim Legler

If you had replaced the name “Tim Legler” with “Sean Salisbury”, you would have thought nothing of the quote - other than ‘Man, when did Salisbury start analyzing basketball?’

Wait, John Madden is supposed to be easy to understand?
At least that’s according to Jon Chelesnik, a former ESPN Radio host, who was a part of the selection process for Forbes Magazine’s list of the Top 10 Most Influential Sportscasters.   Chelesnik had this to say about the marble mouthed NBC analyst:

"He can explain the most complicated NFL strategies in layman's terms--everyone can understand 'boom,'''

Saying he puts things in “layman’s terms” might be a bit of an understatement when describing Madden’s collection of grunts and sounds to describe plays.  “Laymonkey’s terms” might have been more appropriate.  When a magazine like Forbes delves into the sports media world, it’s expected that the Stool Samples might not see eye-to-eye with their selections, but between his high profile and that little video game he’s associated with, Madden literally is his own brand within the NFL, so no quarrels with him as the top choice here.  

It’s at #2 on their list when we start going our separate ways.  Forbes #2 “most influential” was none other than the king of horrible shtick and runaway winner for “most easily amused by himself”, ESPN’s Chris Berman.  As we began to work ourselves up into a frenzy over the Berminator’s selection, we noticed a quick explanation as to how they came about their list and suddenly it all made sense:

“We also asked Nielsen BuzzMetrics to gauge the amount of chatter our candidates generated on the Web last year, with most of its search concentrated on sports blogs.”

Well, that’s all you had to say.  If one criterion for this list was how much “chatter” you generate amongst sports blogs, then Berman easily registered enough negativity to make up for his deficiency in categories such as “likeability” and “ability to perform without relying on horrible jokes” (you know, if those were, in fact, categories).   

Our only question was, if being hated by bloggers makes you influential, how the hell did Colin Cowherd not make the cut?    

Every Four Years the Sports Cliches Arrive
It’s political debate time and you know what that means – sports clichés galore.   Be it boxing or horse racing analogies, you better prepare yourself to be inundated with forced analogies.  This was just from last night:

“Obama held his own in the toe-to-toe fight with Clinton”

“Every perceived weakness came under assault and each candidate left the stage more bloodied than he or she arrived”

“Clinton scored points but took several stylistic hits” 

“A simmering feud between Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama erupted into charges of distortion and exaggeration in a gloves-off presidential debate Monday”

“Huck insists he still has ‘Mo’”

“Clinton, Obama throw more blows outside debate ring”

And if you want to read more about them, you can do so on one of the numerous blogs such as:



Or this one:



But as much as we would like to rant on the topic, Mark Herrman of Newsday did a fine job already:

“Consolation is in knowing it won't last forever. One year from today, one of those candidates will be inaugurated.  By then, the victor will have come down the stretch neck-and-neck in a dead heat because the election probably will not have been a slam dunk. The winner will have taken a timeout after the convention, kept from going out of bounds and been on his or her game whenever someone threw a curve or moved the goalposts.

The next President will know that it was a marathon, not a sprint.”

Stool Samples is written by Josh Bacott and Pat Imig.  They swear this stuff is real.  Email them at info@joesportsfan.com